Great Lakes Initiative

L'Initiative des Grands Lacs

About GLI

The Great Lakes Initiative (GLI) is a network of Christian individuals and organizations working towards peace and reconciliation in seven countries of the Great Lakes Region of East Africa.GLI is also a community of restless Christians yearning for 'new creation'- transformed families, communities and nations. The notion of 'new we' is an expression of the 'new creation' possible only 'in Christ'. It is legally registered as a not-for-profit entity in Uganda. GLI fosters leadership for reconciliation work in politically and ethnically divided communities.Through an annual leadership institute, it provides space and resources for the education, reflection, and renewal of Christian leaders.

The GLI Mission

To mobilize restless Christian leaders from the Great Lakes Region, create a space for their transformation and empower them to participate in God’s mission of reconciliation in communities, organizations and nations.

Leadership Institute

An annual event for restless Christian leaders which provides rich theological content and discourse. This institute enables leaders to engage in a lively imagination and reflection on practices which can build peace and transform leaders using a theological, contextual and practical approach.

Each day of the Institute focuses on a particular question in regards to the ministry of reconciliation: Reconciliation towards what? What’s going on, what’s our context? What does Christian hope look like? What kind of Leadership is needed? Why me, why bother? Daily morning and evening worship provides the framework to explore these questions in depth in the subsequent morning plenaries and afternoon seminars. More than setting the tone for each day, however, the ecumenical worship reflects the rich diversity of our gathering, as we are led in varying styles of worship in a multitude of languages.

Morning plenaries offers further theological reflection on the days’ themes, rooted in both Biblical and contextual analysis. Along with thematic theological teaching, each plenary includes witnesses who reflect on God’s work of reconciliation in their particular context. These witnesses speak to the reality that the work of reconciliation is rooted in lament and hope, and they encourage all participants to seek the “signs of the times” in their own context. All plenaries and worship are bi-lingual (French and English), thereby reflecting the linguistic and cultural diversity of the participants.

The structure of the Institute allows for participants to meet in sessions outside the seminars. For example, “country meetings” are held at meal times and during the evening so that members from each of the Great Lakes countries can continue to discuss the impact that the Initiative has on them.. Each country group spends time identifying signs of hope and signs of lament and making plans to meet again at home.

The ten theses is a guide to understanding what ‘Reconciliation as God’s Mission’ is about and how the ministry of reconciliation forms and shapes lives for transformed families, communities and nations.

Country Working Groups

GLI Country Working Groups (CWGs) are self- organising and self-sustaining groups of GLI institute alumni. The CWGs are committed to realizing a vision of reconciled families, communities, organisations and their own nations. CWGs inspire others in this turbulent region with stories and testimonies of hope and signs of new “We” and healing often where it is hard to imagine that such stories of hope can be found or even realized in a violent and uncertain context.

The GLI South Sudan CWG is an excellent example of a self-organised and self- sustaining GLI alumni. In spite of an ongoing war since December 2013, the group has shown commitment to being Christ’s ambassadors for reconciliation. The CWG become very active upon return from the January 2015 Leadership Institute. A meeting was organised in March 2015 inviting all alumni who had participate in GLI events since 2006. 25 individuals met, deliberated on their challenging context and agreed to meet and pray for their nation every 15th day of the month without fail on a particular theme. Other activities proposed were encouraging key Church leaders to work behind the scenes with informal leaders of the ongoing conflict, mobilise other Christian leaders across the ethnic and political divide to participate in GLI 2016 Leadership Institute and raise funds for their participation.

One Catholic Bishop and one Anglican Bishop who participated in the 2015 GLI Leadership Institute have been active members in the Churches’ Delegation Team involved in mediation of the conflict. The Anglican Bishop was able to lead a group of his Colleagues on a Reconciliation learning tour to Rwanda. While there he connected to the GLI Rwanda Country Working Group members and they had fruitful sharing of experiences. As a CWG, South Sudan members have been able to mobilise 30 individuals to apply for the 2016 Leadership Institute, 12 of whom they found sponsorships for through local partners in South Sudan.

Personal transformation among individuals has also taken place. One of the GLI South Sudan steering committee members narrates that before he came for the Leadership institute and the subsequent CWG Content and Design Workshop he was not sleeping well. ‘The restful time with different people from different contexts and hearing their own stories of living in challenging conflict situations has brought me relief and healing from the traumatic events I have gone through, seen and experienced in our South Sudan context. I have been able to sleep soundly unlike before I came to the GLI. Relationships among the ethnic divide has not hindered our meeting and working together. This is a true testament to reconciliation as God’s mission’.

Our Partners

The four founding partners of GLI are:

African Leadership And Reconciliation Ministries(ALARM)

African Leadership and Reconciliation Ministries was founded in 1994 in response to a crisis of Christian leadership in Africa following the genocide in Rwanda. ALARM works to strengthen the African church to be an instrument of transformation in the community by focusing on developing servant leaders, reconciling relationships, and transforming communities.Read More

Duke Divinity School's Center For Reconciliation (CFR)

Duke Divinity School Center for Reconciliation was established in 2005, the center is rooted in a Christian vision of God’s mission and advances God’s mission of reconciliation in a divided world by cultivating new leaders, communicating wisdom and hope, and connecting in outreach to strengthen leadership.Read More

Mennonite Central Committee (MCC)

Mennonite Central Committee, a worldwide ministry of Anabaptist churches, shares God's love and compassion for all in the name of Christ by responding to basic human needs and working for peace and justice. MCC envisions communities worlwide in right relationship with God, one another and creation.Read More

World Vision International (WVI)

World Vision International is a global Christian relief, development and advocacy organisation dedicated to working with children, families and communities to overcome poverty and injustice.Read More